


on guilt we dare not name

by Canonymous



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Animal Death, Dialogue Light, During Exile Arc, Emotional Manipulation, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Lowercase, Mentioned Niki | Nihachu, Mentioned TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Mentioned Wilbur Soot, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Mushroom the fox, Post-Manberg-Pogtopia War on Dream Team SMP (Video Blogging RPF), Squeeks the fox - Freeform, Toby Smith | Tubbo-centric, in minecraft.., kind of, not a lot just the obligatory dream warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-16 09:13:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29822667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canonymous/pseuds/Canonymous
Summary: “we were trying to do a good thing,” dream sighs, running a hand through his hair. “you were trying to do the right thing, even.”he wishes so badly they were talking about mushroom.(or: tubbo goes to save mushroom from pogtopia, and almost manages to avoid thinking about tommy the entire time. almost.)
Relationships: Toby Smith | Tubbo & TommyInnit
Comments: 15
Kudos: 22





	on guilt we dare not name

**Author's Note:**

> you’ll never believe it it’s me canonymous back with another introspective overly stylized tubbo oneshot!! 
> 
> this one takes place during tommy’s exile arc and takes some slight creative liberties with the stream where tubbo tries to save niki’s fox mushroom because wouldn’t you know it i can wring a metaphor from anything tubbo does haha 
> 
> cws for this oneshot are slight manipulation, discussions of guilt (very prevalent), discussions of animal death (in minecraft but still be careful!), mentions of death, mentions of suicidal ideation, and mentions of like canon-typical injury. let me know if i missed anything!
> 
> i hope you enjoy!!

tubbo has no ulterior motive for saving mushroom.

this is the mantra playing at the back of his head as he and dream walk the overgrown path to pogtopia, their mining plans long forgotten. they’re walking beneath treetops and through tall grass, above ground—it’d probably be smarter to take the underground tunnels, but he just had .. a bad feeling about it. he doesn’t want dream in the tunnels he crafted for wilbur and tommy, no matter if dream’s a friend now. it feels invasive. hell, it feels invasive letting him tag along to get the fox, even, especially with how closely he walks and the questions he asks.

“so you just wanted to come get him,” dream prompts thoughtfully, hands clasped in front of him as he speaks. tubbo’s neutral expression twitches—and he didn’t used to fake bored and uninterested in conversation before to mask his worry, not before he had to sit in on cabinet meeting after cabinet meeting that devolved into senseless, drunken rambling and not before he was placed carefully teetering atop the mantle of power. but that’s politics, he guesses. 

“right,” he answers, stepping cautiously over a tree branch that dream nimbly hops on over. _i have no ulterior motive for saving mushroom,_ he reminds himself. he doesn’t know why dream keeps digging at this point, conversation steering in a direction that leaves him feeling raw and exposed even if he’s sure he’s telling the truth. he has no ulterior motive for saving mushroom. he has nothing to hide. he doesn’t know why dream keeps doubting it. “right, so—i was just thinking, i’m pretty sure he’s still tied up down in pogtopia. he’s been, like, alone, and he’s probably all starving and crap down there. i mean,” a bitter little laugh, guilt twisting within it, “we just left him. alone. that’s kind of messed up, isn’t it?”

dream’s head tilts, almost curiously. 

“do you want me to answer that?” he questions. there’s a note of polite hesitation in his voice, like he knows he won’t like his answer, and tubbo can’t help a grimace at that.

“no,” he mutters, gaze turning down to his feet, feeling all too seen, suddenly, “no, i know it’s messed up. it was rhetorical, big man.”

dream hums his acknowledgment, offers no words of comfort. that’s alright. he wasn’t reaching for any, really, he was just answering dream’s questions. he hasn’t been all that comfort-seeking, recently; something about reassurance as of late has just tasted too much like a kind deception. _you did what you had to do,_ he tells himself, in glimpses of tired eyes he passes in mirrors. 

(he wonders if that’s what technoblade thought, after lighting him up front and center on a stage long since reduced to smithereens. if he had to stare down his reflection and tell its accusing gaze _you did what you had to do_ and if maybe in a way techno had been stuffed in a box with his back to a wall too, at the festival. he didn’t think you could do that much harm unless you wanted to, in a way, but then he’d stood atop that obsidian wall and asked with his whole chest full of splintering glass for dream to escort tommy out and, well, maybe he’s a little more sympathetic to a man who doesn’t care for his sympathy.) 

he pauses as dream stops walking in front of him and when he glances up, it’s because they’ve arrived at the innocuous little entrance to pogtopia. dream’s arm is blocking the carved out opening, though, waiting for tubbo to look up at him and listen. 

“you know you can always talk to me,” he offers, sounding so casual it has to be a little forced. “i mean—i understand it better than any of them, at least.”

he winces. _i have no ulterior motive for saving mushroom,_ he lies again. “about mushroom,” he asks but doesn’t ask, silently requesting dream not _name_ the ulterior motive and make it too real what he’s emulating in this little rescue mission. “there’s nothing to say i haven’t told you, big man, about.. mushroom.”

“...right,” he relents, clearly disbelieving. tubbo wants to cry, a little bit. he doesn’t know why. they’re going to save mushroom from his time in isolation and bring him home and show him he’s loved and not forgotten. dream drops his arm and starts down the steps, and tubbo only waits a second to follow him down. he supposes he should be grateful he’s dropped the barrier blocking the entrance at all.

pogtopia’s frigid, unwelcoming air wastes no time in raising goosebumps along his arms. with a pang, he thinks of every night he’s woken with a start and rushed outside and looked to the skyline, now unobstructed by an obsidian wall, and wondered _is he cold out there? is he alone and starving and cold, without us?_ _does he know i’m thinking of him?_

“cold down here,” dream points out needlessly. _no shit,_ he thinks. “i wonder if he’s even still down here—?”

“he was tied to a fence post,” tubbo answers, surprised at the sharp note to his own voice as he brings up the way t— _mushroom_ has been trapped here, “he couldn’t exactly leave all that easily. he’ll be there.” 

“still,” he adds, with a meaningful glance down at the bottom. it’s enough to put a little pep in his step as he descends the scuffed up steps, surpassing dream carefully enough he doesn’t slip and take a plunge down the ravine’s height. 

he remembers with sudden clarity why he hasn’t been all that eager to head back to pogtopia, now that he's a little less blinded by dream’s comment inadvertently making him rush down the stairs. not only is it cold—the air is downright _suffocating_ down here, all stale and frosty and rife with memories. he doesn’t remember exactly where niki left the fox and when he casts his gaze down the ravine with its walls boxing him in, it lands squarely on a pit he’d watched technoblade and someone he’s very pointedly avoiding thinking about exchange blows. he thinks of dream telling him that very pit had tnt hidden beneath it for wilbur, on the way here. he flinches, turning on his heel and searching for a speck of life in the dark dark box.

a cold hand lands on his shoulder and he properly jolts, spinning before he remembers he’d come here with dream. right. _right._ saving mushroom from exile— _from isolation,_ he means, with dream. 

“over here,” dream hums, pointing with the hand not resting on him and sort of steering him toward a flash of orange curled in a crevice further down. ah. _there._

the rope is pulled near taut where mushroom has skittered backward and away from them, and tubbo gulps to keep the guilt in his cracked chest from spilling out in a dozen useless apologies. for some bizarre reason, he thinks that would piss dream off, to hear him apologize to mushroom for casting him out. maybe he’s expecting too little of dream. after all, he’d come all this way with him. he could’ve made tubbo brave the ravine alone. 

he shakes his head to clear it and in doing so shrugs the hand from his shoulder. dream makes a sound that almost conveys annoyance behind him, but he’s focusing on the fox, now, so he doesn’t think too much of it in the moment. it can’t be that hard to help mushroom, can it? even if it’s been a while? he reaches and untangles the rope from the fence post, tugging gently to show the fox it was freer and could move with them. 

it tugs back, harsher than tubbo had, and before he even gets a chance to ask dream if he should just untie it and free it completely he hurries to instruct, “wh—don’t let go, tubbo, be careful. this is the whole reason we came here.”

“oh,” he says. “right.” he guesses letting it go free is different from taking it back and showing it love again, anyway, dream’s right. there’s not always mercy in casting something out alone, he knows. “okay, let’s get out of here, already. this place gives me the creeps.”

he rises back from where he’d crouched beside the frightened creature and dream waves a hand to direct him to start back up the steps in front, taking the rear end of the little merry band of survivors of this ravine. 

a laugh of relief escapes him as he scales the first few steps. he doesn’t know why he’d thought this would be so hard—there’s a little ball of anxiety at the center of the splintered glass in his chest, unfurling and seeping harmlessly out with each stair. “that, uh—that was a lot easier than i thought it’d be,” he admits, leading it carefully forward. “he’s coming with us, and—and he’s okay. that’s.. good?”

“careful,” dream warns, placing blocks along the edge much like techno had weeks prior. tubbo glances backward at mushroom’s nervous little face, another soft laugh slipping past his lips. he’s so familiar, even after his time in isolation. he’s coming with them. he’s okay. he’s not shouting or attacking or swearing at him, he’s not—

he doesn’t know what happens but it’s in that soft moment of relief, the fresh air from above just within their reach, that mushroom startles viciously at their steps. it’s like the fox catches wind of something that shakes him to his core as he skitters backward and finds dream at his back, and in trying to step forward toward tubbo—he just—he—

“ _mushroom!”_ he howls, slipping a good amount of steps, himself, as he reaches helplessly forward to try and catch the fox that goes pitching wildly over the edge. somewhere in the back of his head he’s thinking of henry’s neck wrapped in a lead and tommy’s horror at how he’d been pulled down to his death, and it occurs to him just a moment before the creature hits the ground that that’s what made him let go of the rope.

he thinks dream shouts _his_ name as they both trip, but he’s too focused on the ball in his chest and the way it’s solidified with the cold dread of what’s just happened, glass cracking in time with the realization. he groans, moves to sit upright and put his head between his knees, grief suddenly choking at him.

 _it was just a fox,_ he lies, to himself, yet again. _it was just a fox, don’t cry._ don’t think about how mushroom was alone and when you came along and tried to fix what you, tubbo, had done you’d fucked it all up and he’s dead, surely, he’s got to be dead at the bottom of the ravine all alone once more. don’t think about another lonely soul you’d surely fuck up saving, either, don’t think about it, do _not_ think about it—

“oh, what the hell?” dream asks, now somewhere below him, his voice bouncing off the cold cold walls until it reaches tubbo’s ears. “here. tubbo, it was holding this.”

cold cold hands press a bone into one of his own and he curls his fingers around it in a last ditch attempt to give it a little warmth. he’s devastated. he shuffles wordlessly to look down where the fox had fallen but dream hurries to reach out and tilt his face away again, murmuring, “i’ll take care of it. don’t look,” and tubbo thinks his voice is cold cold cold too but he nods anyway and looks to the ceiling until dream gives him the all clear.

“we were trying to do a good thing,” dream sighs, running a hand through his hair. “you were trying to do the right thing, even.”

he wishes so badly they were talking about mushroom.

the rest of the day passes disjointedly, guilt eating away at time in bits and pieces until he’s not totally sure when dream leaves him be and when he gets back to l’manberg. he’s thinking a lot about the things he doesn’t want to be thinking about. he tries to focus on the fox itself, at least give him that.

he finds niki, after, and maybe he resents dream a little for leaving him to tell everyone who cares what happened to the creature he’d had a hand in killing. maybe he resents dream a little for having a hand in it too. maybe he still isn’t talking about mushroom. 

he tells niki it was natural causes because he doesn’t want to explain it was a result of all their neglect. that the fox had gone a little too feral in all the time spent alone without a kind hand reaching toward him and that when one finally did he hadn’t quite grasped the intention past the panic of change. that they’re all a little to blame for not stopping that isolation, but tubbo is by far the most to blame for dealing the final blow. would it have been kinder to untie the lead and let it wander the ravine in search of food until it found none, until it succumbed slowly to hunger and loneliness? would it have been fine, maybe, without his meddling, would it have chewed through the rope the very next day and scaled the walls itself?

he finds himself wishing, suddenly, bitterly, wilbur had cared more for all their safety than he had for his own self destruction. he remembers technoblade quietly adding railings after wilbur had taken a tumble too many down steep stone stairs that stretched blocks and blocks down from fresh air and he remembers the scoff of dismissal it’d been met with before they’d been torn back down. he remembers wanting to say _it’s not just you that’s fallen, you know. we’re all down here. we all walk that path._

maybe the fox learned how to fall with reckless, selfish abandon from wilbur. maybe it’d watched him keep his movements too wide and too loose on the higher steps and claw at any hand offered on the way down. 

that’s wishful thinking. _take some fucking responsibility,_ he tells himself, digs his fingernails into his own palms (and that’s convenient, that the only hand tubbo has been offered is his own, because he took notes on wilbur’s collapse, too), _he didn’t want to fall. you left him alone with no friends to speak of for weeks and when his options were you or dream or the long fall down, tommy chose—_

_fuck._

(and later, much later, after a failed execution that makes him think too much of death and the hand he’s played in it lately, he will go to logstedshire. he will head through the tunnels to take a shortcut first, without dream, this time, to see someone all alone who he wants nothing more than to save—he will stare up and up and up at a tower and he will think of mushroom’s frantic tumble down. with dream at his back growing ever closer, and tubbo letting go of the tether. 

he will wonder all the things he wondered about mushroom, and he will make himself face the name tommy when he does.)

but here and now:

he heads to the docks and doesn’t pet any of the dogs he sees there, terrified his very touch will result in something equally disastrous as his most recent attempt at comforting a creature who could use a little affection. he wanders a house he never bothered to furnish and he struggles to feel his aching loneliness for the shame and he tries to think of nothing at all until someone calls him to attention.

he bites his tongue to avoid snapping, _leave me alone, dream,_ until he sits up from where he lay on the docks and realizes it’s _punz_ in a little boat rowing calmly toward him. he’s smiling—a little sadly, he thinks, and tubbo realizes dream has probably already told him of tubbo’s great failing before he hears the squeak.

“i brought you something,” punz tells him, gaze flickering to some point beyond him tubbo doesn’t bother to follow before he turns backward in the boat. he shuffles to reveal a furry bundle of orange and tubbo’s heart _melts._

“i’ve never tamed one,” he admits in a hurry, feeling wholly unqualified after the most recent debacle to have any sort of responsibility over this creature. punz nods, unbothered by the admission.

he steps out of the boat after making sure the new fox stays, and tubbo takes two whole steps back just in case he’ll scare the new one again and get it killed. punz offers him a brand new lead, a collar, a nametag, a second chance, all in the way he gestures him forward to the bright orange fox nestled in the boat. “i’m sure you’ll figure it out,” he laughs, shrugging. “it’s okay, tubbo. just use the lead and i’ll make sure it gets out of the boat. just—don’t kill this one, okay?”

he _won’t._ he won’t cast this one out or leave it alone or tempt it with steep stairs towering above a way out of a panic-induced haze. god damn it, he will keep this one safe. 

he nods, pauses, nods again once he’s sure he understands the instruction on how to tie the fox. the mercenary—and oddly enough, tubbo would guess he’s on the clock, given he’s dressed in his usual mercenary clothing. less casual than punz dresses when he’s not working on a job—helps the fox clamber out and guides tubbo with slightly cold hands in looping the lead gently around the creature’s neck along with the name tag.

“i can name it?” he asks, sort of numbly, mushroom’s little bone weighing heavy in his ender chest beside them. punz hesitates at the way his voice breaks on the last syllable, but he responds, fairly quickly, anyway, earnest:

“‘course,” he says, and something about the way his voice sort of softens warms the anxiety frozen in chunks stuck to the glass in his ribs, “you can name him, tubbo. he’s all yours.”

 _he’s all yours._ he thinks of the compass in his pocket and of the achingly similar words engraved in its surface. he will keep this one safe. he will not leave him alone. he will keep him warm and close.

and when he brings him home, he will do the same for tommy. 

**Author's Note:**

> i hope you enjoyed this oneshot!! i really liked exploring the narrative parallels between tubbo wanting to rescue mushroom and tubbo’s guilt over leaving tommy in exile, not to mention dream’s role in both!! 
> 
> if you liked the style and direction of this fic be sure to go to my profile and check out my other fics, and if you enjoyed this be sure to leave a kudos or even a comment if you’re feeling talkative!! they mean the world to me <3
> 
> if you want to talk more about the dream smp (especially tubbo) you can find me on tumblr @ themostrabidofcarebears or twitter @ nov_emberrrs !!! feel free to dm B)


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